Elon Musk has a limit until October 28 to finalize the purchase of Twitter, if you want to avoid going to trial. Although he has not yet taken control of the company, the billionaire is already planning lay off 75% of staffaccording to a new report from Washington Post.
The outlet had access to documents on the latest conversations between the CEO of Tesla Y potential investors, who would help finance the acquisition. Elon would have told them that if he eventually bought the company, he would make massive cuts in the coming months to reduce costs.
Twitter currently has 7,500 employees globally, the report notes, and Musk’s plan is left alone with about 2,000 from them. That means about 5,500 people would be unemployed.
There will be mass layoffs on Twitter, with or without Elon Musk
Anonymous sources familiar with the case revealed that, even if the South African tycoon does not remain as owner, the platform will eliminate many jobs.
Before the deal with Musk, the current Twitter board of directors had already scheduled lay off 25% of workers by the end of 2023. This would help them save about 800 million dollars in wages and to overcome their economic problems.
The idea of space x owner is to triple these layoffs and speed them up, as it has long been said that the social network is overstaffed. For now, some awards for employees are on hold and, in general, the atmosphere is one of tense expectation and uncertainty, they explain.
The drastic reduction of the workforce would seriously affect the operation of the social network, as well as its millions of users. The person in charge of metrics and SPAM control at Twitter commented that firing so many people is “unimaginable” and users “would notice it immediately”.
The company also intends to make significant cuts in its infrastructureincluding data centers that keep the site running. The expert warns that the platform could be more vulnerable to cyberattacks, and its more than 200 million daily users are at risk of being exposed to offensive material or hacks.
The controversial system stack ranking to qualify workers
According to the informants, Elon Musk would also seek to implement a system of stack rankingwhich could be translated as “vitality curve”, with which bosses must classify employees from best to worst.
This is a technique for identifying the weakest workers that was popularized in the 1980s by General ElectricExplain Xataka. “Then the most valued 20% were rewarded, the 70% were kept and the least valued 10% were fired”details the medium.
In 2013, microsoft tried the stack ranking and they decided to suspend it, since “it ended up affecting collaboration, accentuated toxic internal competition and created confrontations between colleagues.” But it seems that the disruptive billionaire wants to give it a try.
Among his other plans for the social network, the intention to turn it into an “app for everything” called X.com. Taking into account that the 51-year-old businessman managed to make his strange perfume with the smell of “burnt hair” run out in a matter of hours, we cannot imagine what he will be able to do with a platform as powerful as Twitter.
Elon Musk and Twitter are expected to finalize the transaction next Friday, October 28, otherwise the trial will resume in November.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.